Following on from his lecture on the 16th of Feb., Professor Hugill has taken the time to read your comments and is including a response. He addresses a variety of questions which stem from your own blog responses. Please read Professor Hugill's thoughts and respond to his question (via the comments on this post) which you'll find at the end of his letter.
"Dear Jess,Thank you for asking me to respond to the student comments following my lecture. I thought your post about the importance of critical thinking and logical argument was excellent. I'm ill in bed at the moment, so the brain is not firing on every cylinder, but on the other hand I have some time to write!
I agree very much with Mandy's comment that we covered a lot, maybe too much, in two hours, and of course none of the students has studied music, so somehow they had to rapidly assimilate both technical and aesthetic information about some of the most challenging music of the past 100 years. I thought they listened well - attentive and diligent and, given the content, relaxed, which was not always my experience when I covered similar ground with music students, who often became quite agitated.
Andy P. seems to have had the most extensive reaction and makes a number of points. I'll try to approach these in the spirit they are intended.
Let's tackle the 'definition of music' thing frst. Bear in mind that what we are seeking here is a definition. Definitions have pretensions to being objective, verifiable, and universal (applicable in all situations). In practice, there are many types of definition (see http://www.sfu.ca/philosophy/swartz/definitions.htm for example) but they all share that sense of rational aspiration to the absolute.
Music as 'organised sound' is not my definition but that of Edgard Varèse in his lecture/essay 'The Liberation of Sound'. He had very specific reasons for making the statement, arguing in favour of the inclusion of sounds not considered 'musical' in the traditional sense (i.e. not necessarily produced by instruments). No doubt this has inadequacies, but it *is* a definition. Notice he is not ascribing any particular value to the 'music' he defines. He is not attempting to say 'this is good music' or 'this is bad music'. He is trying to be factual and objective in order to expand our understanding of what music might be. The affective layer (such as emotional impact, aesthetic judgement, etc.) is largely put aside.
The word 'organised' is somewhat loaded. The first question we might ask is 'organised by whom'? Some might hear organisation in natural sound (which takes us into soundscape, which I had no time to mention in the lecture), but I think for Varèse the idea was that a piece of music is organised in the same way as a living organism - made up of many related elements. This suggests intentionality. One standard definition of a work of art is that it is evidence of an artistic intention (if an artist calls it art, it's art). In the postmodern world, we might also argue that it requires a suitable reception (people have to agree).
The point Andy P makes that music has no material existence is of course correct. Sound is a disturbance in a medium. I don't think Varèse is being materialistic, but I do think he is being scientific. Phenomena, such as electricity, may be observed empirically. Music is a perceptual phenomenon, certainly, but that does not necessarily mean it has only *emotional* existence. (Notice that the statement 'music is a perceptual phenomenon' is not a definition either, because it is incomplete).
Analysis of emotion is a vast field. Academic and scientific approaches range from the neuroscientific to the psychological. The one that seems to be causing the objection here is the James/Lange idea that emotion results from experiencing bodily changes, rather than causing them. There simply is neither time nor space (nor do I have the expertise!) to attempt to summarize these theories, but I think it is true to say that we still lack an accurate and consistent mapping of musical gesture to emotional response, probably due to social, cultural and individual variations. This is what makes emotion shifting ground from which to attempt a *definition* of anything. In what would an 'emotional definition' consist?
This is not a denial of the importance of emotion in music. It is simply a rejection of that as a basis for a definition. One person's 'emotive sound' is another person's 'indifferent noise'. I, for example, find some of Merzbow's 'noise music' emotionally affecting, whereas much pop music leaves me indifferent (which puts me in a minority). But I still think pop music is music. My opinion matters not if I am seeking to define 'music', but it matters a lot when I am choosing what to listen to! Perhaps an interesting variation on your question would be 'what is music *for* - something I tackle in my book.
One final point of accuracy - Cage's music was not 'unorganised'. It was organised using chance procedures. That may seem like splitting hairs, but chaos theory has shown us that there is organisation behind 'chance' and that randomness is predictable. On a historical note, 'organised sound' has stood the test of time as a definition and is still widely used. In fact, there is a journal published by Cambridge University Press under that very title and edited by Prof Leigh Landy, who heads the Music Technology and Innovation Research Centre here at DMU.
Turning to the discussion of serialism, let's have a crack at the statement:
"since it can be generated by a computer with no inspiration need at all and (at this time to me) sounds terrible, how can we say it is any different from what we would accept as patterned 'noise' from any other aesthetically unpleasing machine?"
There are a set of assumptions underpinning this which need to be challenged. The first is the rather 19th Century idea of 'inspiration'. In fact, much of the world's music is written without inspiration and is really the product of some kind of process or formula. Even those people who acknowledge inspiration are famously modest about its true value ("99% perspiration, 1% inspiration", said Thomas Edison, discussing the nature of genius). This is not to say the results of these formulae cannot be inspiring. Think of Javanese gamelan, for example. Or hymn tunes. But neither does inspiration guarantee good music. In fact there are many pieces that are highly inspired, yet unconvincing as music. Believe me, I've written some of them myself!
The next is the assumption that computers cannot write pleasing music. I wonder how much music written by computers people have actually heard? I don't mean music played off laptops, I mean music actually composed by computers. For early examples, try Xenakis, Koenig or the celebrated 'Iliac Suite' by Lejaren Hiller from 1957. For more recent examples (and these I am pretty certain will be found 'pleasing') try the many samples of fractal music, evolutionary music, generative music, algorithmic music, etc. that can be found online. Check out 'Changing Weights' by our own Dr Ron Herrema as an example http://www.capstonerecords.org/CPS-8788.html
Finally, and this is what Varèse was arguing about, why is it necessarily the case that a machine produces 'noise'? If we accept that noise is unwanted sound (one can challenge that definition, by all means), then there are situations where machines do not produce noise, and sounds that are 'musical' might be considered noise. I think the perception of noise changes depending on circumstance.
It is true that total serialism was very well suited to computer composition, and in fact grew up alongside the development of early computers and dominated computer music. Perhaps the biggest figure in this field was Milton Babbitt, who is definitely worth a visit http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milton_Babbitt
By the way, I'm not sure that additive synthesis is a good analogy for Steve Reich's phasing method in 'Come Out' and other pieces. Really, the crucial thing there is layering of sound and an audible process. It's a shame I had no time to play that piece - you really need to hear it to understand how it works. There is a copy in the library.
I could go on, but I feel the need of rest. Let's end with a question: what is the difference between a scientific experiment and a musical experiment? That should give people plenty to chew upon!"
Note, the image is part of the score of Varèse's 'Poème Electronique' (1958).
The title Inanimate Alice Episode Two: Italy, suggested to me initially that the work would be focussed on a lifeless child living in Italy. Inanimate being lifeless; unable to move and the name Alice suggested that of a female child. I immediately thought of “Alice in Wonderland” and formed an assumption that the work would entail something completely the opposite, a kind of “Antichrist Alice in Wonderland”.
Considering whether reading for fun is any different to research perception wise, I feel it truly depends on what you read in both instances. I actively enjoy reading about technology both on a personal and research level and find it equally interesting.
I had inkling that the work would introduce the use of multimedia, which is a something I have not experienced before in the context of research.
Upon entering the site for the first time, I was still slightly sceptical concerning its content and the first impression I formed was the work, with regards to its genre, was that it was that of a short story or fairy tale .Upon further reflection I considered it to be conclusively a memoir. I did also have some recollection of the authors/creator names especially Kate Pullinger, but could not recollect why.
The first “slides” or pages of the work immediately set a scene of tragedy and are composed of a dark colour scheme, limited but strong text with quite powerful music. The text is minimal and this assisted in the disturbed feeling and upset of the child losing her parents.
I have included a screenshot of one of the earlier slides, as I feel this demonstrates the scene of tragedy. This feeling of loss is one that I believe, all of us have felt at sometime or another when a situation has not occurred when or how we had envisioned it.
I believe that the music/imagery helped to set this aspect of the scene but became tedious and annoying further into the work.
I felt that the work seemed to jump very dramatically from one theme to another which appeared initially to be unrelated, which made its understanding quite difficult. Upon further reflection, was this done to emulate the roller coaster of emotions felt by Alice?
The work itself , did I feel, immerse you into the current events on screen so much so that I tended to forget what had previously occurred and it then became fragmented and confused.
There appeared to be three main themes in the work
1.Tragedy
2.Terror
3.Questioning
Alice questions herself and situation, which I feel help to immersive the reader into the situation.
The aspect of the work that most surprised me was the description of her tutor when she removed her niqab “she is like a wonderful bird all bright colours and flashing jewellery”. What relevance does this have to her losing her parents and why gaudy imagery of a bird with Arabic music and the increasingly annoying mobile phone noises?
This part of the work as well as the Saudi compound element, did not in my opinion serve any purpose to the story. Inanimate Alice Episode Two: Italy suggested that the story was based in Italy not Saudi.
Chisholm’s Third Law of Human Interaction. Purposes as understood by the purposer will be misunderstood by others.
The Wordle tag cloud matched my interpretation to some extent through how highly I rated particular key words that stood out from reading the paper. Some of the words, although not used frequently, stood out from my interpretation of the context in which they where used. The words raised where 'conspiracy', 'Marxian', and 'rhetoric-police',whilst decreasing 'reading','writing' and 'professionalism', which were used frequently.
My interpretation of the paper itself was that it was written by a person who is enthusiastic about the 'reader-response theory' and is dismayed by the 'grand conspiracy' against it by 'the elite' scholars who do not see the value of such a 'popular' theory such as the one she supports.
Is there a conspiracy against the Reader-Response theory? I cannot tell from reading just this paper. I could tell that Harkin is entrenched into the idea that Reader-Response is the theory that should be taught more, but the way the paper was written makes me immediately question the validity of this through the way the point was argued for. 'Reader-Response' was described as populist in the 1970's and 1980's and was, and 'still is' shunned by the scholarly elite whilst those elitists hold up more newer or more established theories. I feel that it was more about 'apathy' than 'conspiracy' that lead to the decline of reader-response. A theory that was once made popular by an enthusiastic 'underclass' and its figureheads declined because of its figureheads dieing off and not being replaced and driving the benefits home. No matter what its benefits, a theory still needs proponents who voice them, in the case of 'Reader-Response', the proponents left seem at first reading, more desperate by siting 'Elitists', 'Conspiracy' and 'Marxism' to forward their views rather than just focusing on the benefits of such a theory. This then results in my views, although not fixed, of disregarding the paper with my own 'apathy' as I was not really won with the argument.
I also would like to agree with the points made by the previous blog posts by Paul and Rachel and the remarks they made about the theory and 'Common-Sense'.
Due to severe weather conditions the lecture today is cancelled:
Please review the lecture presentation that has been uploaded to Blackboard (in both the course documents and learning materials sections) and complete the Wordle activity.
For your own "reading" assignment, choose ONE of the following:
After reading 'Pierre Menard, Author of the Quixote' (1939) by Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), my initial thoughts were that it was a confusing text to read, with very elaborate, highly academic and in places contradictory language, that seemed to be trying to disguise the truth. The mention of two members of the aristocracy that have supposedly verified this work adds to the deception, giving his story additional authority and authenticity. In addition, you are led to believe that the narrator/reviewer knows the writer personally as he includes quotes from direct correspondence to support his claims.
The truth is that this review is fiction and the work he is discussing - written by Menard, a fictitious 20th Century French writer - is a direct copy of the original 'Don Quixote' (1605 & 1615) by 17th Century Spanish novelist, Miguel De Cervantes (1547-1616). Borges implies that Menard has brought something of himself and of his historical context to the 'translation' and, in so doing, has made it somehow superior. This irony is highlighted by his humorous comparison of two identical passages.
Borges is clearly interested in Menard's interpretation of the text, suggesting that history and context will always change a text's meaning. Although the words are the same, Menard's version is unique because he brings something different to the 'rudimentary art of reading' - as does every new reading - thus giving centrality to 'reader-response' and raising questions over authorship...
This module gives an introduction to key ideas in critical and cultural theory that affect creative technologies and the creative industries.
The syllabus includes Modernism and Postmodernism, Structuralism and Poststructuralism, Feminism, Semiotics, Linguistic Theory, Anthropology, Rhizomes, The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, Noise and Communication, Escience and Esocial science and The Ethnography of Cyberspace.
